The Spanish AI company closed a Series B round for which Bullhound Capital acted as lead investor
Multiverse Computing, a Spanish AI company, attracted the resources of lead investor Bullhound Capital, CDP Venture Capital, HP Tech Ventures, SETT, Forgepoint Capital International, Santander Climate VC, Quantonation, Toshiba, and Capital Riesgo de Euskadi – Grupo SPRI.
Multiverse Computing, a Spanish scaleup for the compression of quantum-inspired artificial intelligence models, secured a 215 Million US Dollars Series B round that attracted the resources of lead investor Bullhound Capital, follow on CDP Venture Capital, HP Tech Ventures, SETT, Forgepoint Capital International, Santander Climate VC, Quantonation, Toshiba, and Capital Riesgo de Euskadi – Grupo SPRI (press release).
In December 2024, CDP Venture Capital joined the company’s Series A round through the ServiceTech and Energytech units of Corporate Partners I (press release). Multiverse Computing invested such resources in expanding its Italian presence in Italy and the previously signed partnerships which included a project EuroHPC and the supercomputer Leonardo of Bologna data center CINECA, a consortium of IT players of which are part 103 local government institutions from the Italian North-East regions.
Multiverse Computing developed CompactifAI, a compression technology capable of reducing by up to 95% the size of LLMs (Large Language Models) while preserving their performance. After dedicating 2024 to the platform development and the roll-out phase with its first customers, the scale-up will accelerate the large-scale adoption of the technology with the new resources.
The LLMs executions require cloud-based infrastructures that drive up data centre costs. Traditional compression techniques aim to address these challenges, but the resulting models have significantly lower performance than the original tools. CompactifAI models are highly compressed versions of the leading open source LLMs but retain the original accuracy and are 4-12 times faster while allowing for a 50%-80% reduction in inference costs. These cheap and energy-efficient compressed models can be run in the cloud, in private data centres or – in the case of ultra-compressed LLMs – directly on devices such as PCs, phones, cars, drones and even Raspberry PIs.
Enrique Lizaso Olmos, the founder and ceo of Multiverse Computing, said: “The prevailing view is that the reduction of LLM is costly. Multiverse’s platform started as a breakthrough in model compression and quickly proved transformative, unlocking new efficiencies in AI implementation and gaining rapid adoption due to its ability to radically reduce hardware requirements for running AI models. With the entry of a unique pool of experienced and strategic global investors, and with Bullhound’s Capital as the lead investor, we can now further advance our hyper-focused compressed AI model offering and deliver exceptional performance with minimal infrastructure.”
CompactifAI relies on tensor networks, a quantum-inspired approach to simplify neural networks. Román Orús, Multiverse co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, pioneered the research in such fields and commented: “For the first time in history, we are able to profile the inner workings of a neural network in order to eliminate billions of spurious correlations and truly optimise all types of artificial intelligence models.”
Per Roman, Bullhound Capital co-founder and managing partner, added: “Multiverse’s CompactifAI substantially changes artificial intelligence processing, responding to the global need for greater efficiency in the field. Roman Orus convinced us that he and his team of engineers are developing world-class solutions in this highly complex and computationally intensive field. Enrique Lizaso is the perfect ceo to rapidly expand the company in the global race for AI dominance. I am also delighted to see that so many high-profile investors, such as HP and Forgepoint, have decided to contribute to the round.”
Tuan Tran, HP Inc President of Technology and Innovation, said: “At HP, we are committed to driving the future of work, offering solutions that foster business growth and enhance professional fulfilment. Our investment in Multiverse Computing supports this ambition. By making AI applications more accessible, Multiverse’s innovative approach has the potential to bring the benefits of AI in terms of improved performance, personalisation, privacy and cost efficiency to businesses of scale.”
Damien Henault, a Forgepoint Capital International managing director, concluded: “The Multiverse team solved a deeply complex problem with far-reaching implications. The company is well positioned to be a fundamental layer of the AI infrastructure stack. Multiverse represents a quantum leap for the global deployment and application of AI models, enabling smarter, cheaper and greener AI. This is just the beginning of a huge market opportunity.”
